Is Road America A Championship Preview?
For whatever reason, Road America is a place that rewards the best. Just look at the recent winners since we’ve been coming back to this scenic track. Will Power a former series champion won in 2016 for a race that had 3 of the top 5 drivers in the final standings finish in the top 5 that day. Scott Dixon won in 2017 and won the title a year later in 2018. Josef Newgarden won the championship in 2017 and won the race in 2018 on a day that 3 of the 5 in the final points standings scored a top 5 in Road America too.
For that 2017 race, the entire top 5 in Road America finished in the top 5 in the final standings at that.
Alexander Rossi won in 2019 and was 3rd in points. Newgarden finished 3rd in that year’s race and would go on to win the title. 4 of the top 5 in the final standings finished in the top 5 at Road America that season as well.
2020 saw Dixon win Race 1 and 3 of the top 5 in the final standings finish in the top 5 that day as well as seeing Dixon win the title later that season. The same fate happened to Alex Palou for the 2021 season. He won but only after Newgarden had a mechanical issue on the final restart. They were 1-2 that day and 1-2 in points at seasons end. 4 of the top 6 in the final points standings finished in the top 6 that day and would have been 5 in the top 7 if not for Newgarden’s incident.
Last year, second in points in Newgarden won. Sixth in points was second. Fourth in points was seventh. Third in points was ninth.
So, out of the last 7 years at Road America, at least 4 drivers would score a top 5 there and would later finish in the top 5 at seasons end in points. In fact, the eventual season champion has finished on the podium in 5 of the last 6 years here (2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 19th).
Among the 3 on the podium on Sunday, you’ll likely find the series champion this season. Among the top 5 finishers, 3 will be there at seasons end too.
Can Andretti Really Top Penske-Ganassi?
Coming into the Month of May, Andretti Autosport had a ton of momentum. They lost it all leaving it. Can they recapture it this weekend in Road America?
Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske have combined to have won each of the last four races here including 7 of the 8 since the 2016 return. They’ve also had the two most podiums scored here with Penske having 9 and Ganassi 7 in that span as well.
The two teams have won each of the last 10 series championships. They’ve also won 6 of the 7 races this year and 40 of the 54 (75.4%) of the races with the Aeroscreen.
In Barber, two of the three podium spots went to Penske. In the GMR Grand Prix, two of the three this time went to McLaren. Ganassi took the other in Indy. In the last two races, Penske and Ganassi went 1-2.
However, is this the weekend Andretti can respond?
While they didn’t win last year’s race, they did have 3 cars in the top five at races end and have a podium in Barber this year with Romain Grosjean.
They also took the pole last year and had 3 cars in the top 7 of the starting lineup that day. Then, they got some bad news that Colton Herta would have to serve a 6 spot grid penalty for not being able to have his No. 26 Dallara-Honda engine repaired from his Carb Day crash. They had 3 weeks to get it fixed and they couldn’t. Instead of rolling off 6th, he’d now start 11th instead.
Grosjean slid up to 6th and with Alexander Rossi snapping his 3 year pole drought, maybe 1 of the 2 could get the win.
Rossi would lead the 1st 16 laps but get slowed up on his initial stop by Scott McLaughlin who was coming into his pit at the same time as Rossi coming out. That allowed 2nd place starter Josef Newgarden to exit ahead of Rossi and stay ahead of him the rest of the way.
On the final restart, Rossi was too close to Newgarden which slowed him up a bit and allowed Marcus Ericsson to challenge him for 2nd now. Ericsson got by and Rossi fell to 3rd.
Herta went from 11th to 8th by the first few laps and then was 6th on Lap 6. He was all the way up to 4th for the final restart but had very few push to passes left. Grosejan was 5th and had plenty and used them to get by Herta for 4th.
They’d finish 3rd, 4th and 5th to give AA 3 cars in the top 5 but none better than 3rd. It’s a start but not a day that they expected.
Now, can they win on Sunday?
Grosjean is 2-for-2 in top five finishes here and was runner-up at a similar track at Barber in April. Kyle Kirkwood, already a winner this year and driving Rossi’s old car, won 5 of his 6 Road to Indy starts here. Herta has four straight top fives.
This could be their day for a rebound.
Will Late Race Restart Alter The Race?
2021 saw Josef Newgarden’s gearbox fail him on the final restart. Last year, Alexander Rossi was too close on the final restart and didn’t get by Newgarden for the lead. That also allowed Marcus Ericsson by for second. Will we see a third straight late race restart to alter the finish on Sunday?
We saw three restarts over the final 13 laps the last time out in Detroit. We saw three final restarts inside of 10 to go in the Indy 500 the week prior. Will Sunday’s race come down to another late race restart?
Can McLaren Keep Momentum Going?
Arrow McLaren Racing is 0-for-7 this season in regards to victories. In fact, they’ve won just once in the last 20 races. However, among the 7 races this season, they’ve had the next best finisher in three of them. They’ve been on the podium in four of the seven races too.
The thing is, while Pato O’Ward has hit a lull recently, the overall momentum of McLaren in general is trending up.
They had two of the three podium spots in the GMR Grand Prix last month. All three cars finished in the top five that day. In Detroit, they had two of their three cars again in the top five.
Felix Rosenqvist now has four top 10 finishes over the last five races including a pair of top fives in the last three. He had three total top five finishes in 2022 and already has two in the first seven races in 2023.
In fact, the Swedish driver is really starting to find his groove. That all started in last year’s GMR Grand Prix.
Prior to that, he had no top five finishes, just two top 10’s and 14 laps led in his first 18 starts with McLaren. Over his last 20, he’s had 14 top 10 finishes, five top fives and 65 laps led.
Is it enough to keep his job with the team? Speculation is that Alex Palou is coming over and both Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi are in the midst of multi-year deals. With Kyle Larson running the Indy 500, is Rosenqvist doing enough to salvage his job with this team?
Right now, he’s making it hard for them to not keep him. Next up is the spot of his lone INDYCAR win – Road America.
“I think we needed it,” Rosenqvist said of this podium finish in Detroit. “We’ve been pretty much up there every weekend. We had three DNFs which hurt.
“It seems this year in the championship a lot of the top runners have had tough races as well. I think we can recover if we keep the momentum going.
“It’s nice. I think all the boys and girls on the 6 car, Arrow McLaren, really deserved it. We’ve been up there sniffing for a long time. Hasn’t worked out.”
The momentum is equally building for Alexander Rossi. He just scored his fifth top 10 finish of the season already including four of which being in the top five. He was third in the GMR Grand Prix, fifth in the last two races (Indy 500, Detroit).
By comparison, he had just three top five finishes with Andretti in 2021 and five each for the 2020 and 2022 seasons. He’s nearly had as many top fives in 7 starts with McLaren than he had in full seasons with Andretti.
With having momentum now, I was curious his thoughts on in a series as difficult as this one, is it harder to get momentum or keep it?
“That’s a good question. Probably keep, you know, I think I think every driver and team can like look back on weekends of like, you can pull positives out of anything, right?” he told me. “And so like internally, that can be good momentum, even if like the result doesn’t show it like take RLL for example. Like I think as a three car group, they probably have a lot of good momentum. So it’s definitely harder to keep you know, the series is so competitive and you can go one weekend from thinking you’ve got everything sorted out to the next beam. absolutely nowhere. So it’s challenging.”
Rossi scored a pole here a year ago with Andretti.
How Will RLL Look?
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing looked like legitimate contenders literally a month ago on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Christian Lundgaard was second in both practice sessions and qualified on the pole. Jack Harvey started fourth and Graham Rahal in eighth. The speed was there.
Then, it all went away. With having all 4 cars in the bottom 5 speeds in qualifying for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500, including Graham Rahal missing the race for them all together, the momentum was halted.
Then in the last race in Detroit, they struggled. However, the series had a week off and are back on a natural road course this weekend. The team has also had some great success before in Road America including all three drivers finishing in the top 13 a year ago with Rahal in eighth and Lundgaard in 10th.
Can they pick up in Road America where they left off in last month’s GMR Grand Prix?
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